Baltimore On Edge: National Guardsmen Take Up Position

An officer stands near a blaze, Monday, April 27, 2015, after rioters plunged part of Baltimore into chaos, torching a pharmacy, setting police cars ablaze and throwing bricks at officers. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

BALTIMORE (AP) — Baltimore was a city on edge Tuesday as hundreds of National Guardsmen patrolled the streets against unrest for the first time since 1968, hoping to prevent another outbreak of rioting.

Maryland's governor vowed there would be no repeat of the looting, arson and vandalism that erupted Monday in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods and sent a shudder through all of Baltimore.

But in a measure of how tense things were, the city was under a 10 p.m.-to-5 a.m. emergency curfew. All public schools were closed. And the Baltimore Orioles canceled Tuesday night's game at Camden Yards and — in what may be first in baseball's 145-year history — announced that Wednesday's game will be closed to the public.

The streets were largely calm all morning and into the evening. But police with riot shields lined up shoulder to shoulder and kept close watch over a growing, chanting crowd of about 1,000 people at the corner where some of the worst violence took place the night before.

The real test was expected after dark, with the start of the curfew.

The looting and rock- and bottle-throwing by mostly black rioters broke out just hours after the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who suffered a fatal spinal cord injury while in police custody. It was the worst such violence in the U.S. since the unrest that erupted last year over the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed black 18-year-old shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

Political leaders and residents called the violence a tragedy for the city and lamented the damage done by the rioters to their own neighborhoods.

"It's disruption of a community. The same community they say they care about, they're destroying. You can't have it both ways," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said.

But the rioting also brought out a sense of civic pride and responsibility among many Baltimore residents, with hundreds of volunteers turning out to sweep the streets of glass and other debris with brooms and trash bags donated by hardware stores.

With schools closed, Blanca Tapahuasco brought her three sons, ages 2 to 8, from another part of the city to help clean up the brick-and-pavement courtyard outside a looted CVS pharmacy in the hard-hit neighborhood where Gray was arrested.

"We're helping the neighborhood build back up," she said. "This is an encouragement to them to know the rest of the city is not just looking on and wondering what to do."

CVS store manager Haywood McMorris said the destruction didn't make sense: "We work here, man. This is where we stand, and this is where people actually make a living."

As the day wore on, police fielded rumors of would-be rioters gathering at various places in and around Baltimore, but as of late afternoon, only a few scattered arrests were reported.

The street corner where some of the worst violence occurred resembled a street festival. Musicians played in the intersection, surrounded by an appreciative crowd, street vendors hawked bottles of water, and the crod largely ignored the line of police in riot gear stretched across West North Avenue.

"We're not going to have another repeat of what happened last night," Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said. "We're going to make sure we get Baltimore back on track."

Hogan said there were "a couple of thousand" National Guardsmen and police officers from various communities and states in Baltimore, with more on the way. National Guardsmen in helmets with face shields surrounded City Hall, standing behind bicycle-rack barriers.

The crisis marks the first time the National Guard has been called out to deal with unrest in Baltimore since 1968, when some of the same neighborhoods that rose up this week burned for days after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. At least six people died then, and some neighborhoods still bear the scars.

Jascy Jones of Baltimore said the sight of National Guardsmen on the street gave her a "very eerie feeling."

"It brought a tear to my eye. Seeing it doesn't feel like the city that I love," she said. "I am glad they're here, but it's hard to watch."

At the White House, President Barack Obama called the deaths of several black men around the country at the hands of police "a slow rolling crisis." But he added that there was "no excuse" for the violence in Baltimore, and said the rioters should be treated as criminals.

Maryland National Guard spokesman Lt. Charles Kohler said that about 2,000 members would be deployed through the day and that the force could build to 5,000.

Also, State Police said they were putting out a call for up to 500 additional law enforcement officers from Maryland and as many as 5,000 from around the mid-Atlantic region.

With the city bracing for more trouble, several area colleges closed early Tuesday including Loyola University Maryland, Johns Hopkins University and Towson University.

The violence set off soul-searching among community leaders and others, with some suggesting the uprising was about more than race or the police department — it was about high unemployment, high crime, poor housing, broken-down schools, and lack of opportunity in Baltimore's inner-city neighborhoods.

The city of 622,000 is 63 percent black. The mayor, state's attorney, police chief and City Council president are black, as is 48 percent of the police force.

"You look around and see unemployment. Filling out job applications and being turned down because of where you live and your demographic. It's so much bigger than the police department," said Robert Stokes, 36, holding a broom and a dustpan on a corner where some of the looting and vandalism took place.

He added: "This place is a powder keg waiting to explode."

In the aftermath of the riots, state and local authorities found themselves facing questions about whether their initial response had been adequate.

Batts, the police commissioner, said police did not move in faster because those involved in the early stages of the unrest were just "kids" — teenagers who had just been let out of high school.

"Do you want people using force on 14- 15- and 16-year-old kids that are out there?" he asked. "They're old enough to know better. But they're still kids. And so we had to take that into account while we were out there."

The mayor waited hours to ask the governor to declare a state of emergency, and the governor hinted she should have come to him earlier.

"We were trying to get in touch with the mayor for quite some time," Hogan said. "She finally made that call, and we immediately took action."

Rawlings-Blake said officials initially thought they had the unrest under control.

Gray was arrested April 12 after running away at the sight of police, authorities said. He was held down, handcuffed and loaded into a police van. Leg cuffs were put on him when he became irate inside. He died a week later.

Authorities said they are still investigating how and when he suffered the spinal-cord injury — during the arrest or while he was in the van, where authorities say he was riding without being belted in, a violation of department policy.